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Consumer Behavior Secrets You Can Use to Grow Your Business

Did you know that adding a person’s name to an email subject line can increase the open rate by more than 20%? Or that changing the color of a “click here” button on a landing page to red can increase click throughs by more than 15%?

Here’s another one — did you know that anecdotal evidence shows that if you use Photoshop to dilate the pupils of the models in your marketing materials, you can increase the effectiveness of your ad by 1%, 2% or 3%? The reason for that is because humans subconsciously find people with dilated pupils more attractive than people with small pupils.

Check out the images below and you’ll notice that the model with the dilated pupils looks slightly more attractive than the one with the un-dilated pupils.

Why does this happen? Because when someone is attracted to another person, their pupils naturally open up. In other words, if Bob finds Sally attractive, then Bob’s pupils dilate. The result is that Sally is more likely to find Bob attractive because subconsciously she knows that he thinks she’s attractive.

So, if you artificially dilate the pupils in close-ups of the models in your ads, they’ll be more attractive to the reader. The result will increase the overall effectiveness of the ad.

How You Can Put This to Work. Understanding consumer behavior is one thing, but understanding how to put it into action is another.

Here are some steps you can take to take a deeper dive into this subject and put it into action:

Take one element of your current marketing campaign — it might be a direct mail piece, a landing page, a banner ad — and conduct an A/B split test. By applying some of the consumer behavior techniques you’ve read here and in the books, you can test your way to success with your marketing materials.

The field of consumer behavior is rich with new data and information, so be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest findings. More importantly, put the new information to work in your campaigns. After all, it’s one thing to understand consumer behavior, but it’s an entirely different thing to put it to work!